I.M. Beck - quote, unquote

Did I say that what Doctor Alfred Sant directed his supporters to do on referendum day was tantamount to a boycott, or did I not?

Now he's clarifying the directive: people who have to trot along to the polls because of the local council elections should either leave their referendum voting document at home, lest they get confused (he really does think they're all congenitally stupid, doesn't he?) or write "Viva Hal-Ghaxaq" (or wherever) on the vote or vote no.

Which prompted one confused old biddy to ask him to write it out for her, lest she spoil her vote by spelling it wrong, but that's another story, perhaps proving that some of Doctor Alfred Sant's audiences should actually be put away.

Getting back to the point, as one should, the MLP and its membership should be hanging its head in collective shame now that it has let the cabal of four get away with slipping a boycott in despite the vote against it that there was at the executive level.

Quite apart from everything else, it is shameful that a vote on the country's future has been reduced to a flippant "spoil your vote, don't vote or vote no - who cares?" attitude, with the individual who dreamed it up, when asked, being unable to say what he would be doing.

Prepare yourself for the nauseating sight of him claiming that he's won the referendum because he's going to count all the absentees and morons who want to scribble on their vote as people in favour of his PartnerSHIP.

Slogans rule OK

I suppose you're getting as heartily sick as I am with the letters E and U and that cockamamie notion PartnerSHIP, with the accent on the ship, so the word sounds for all the world like a sneeze, especially when repeated about 50 times, as it was when I had the misfortune to be watching Super One while they waited for Doctor Alfred Sant to mouth some platitudes.

But however boring the whole thing is becoming, we have to keep at it because Doctor Alfred Sant's cynical, if utterly meaningless, ploy of promising all things bright and beautiful to all men and women, so long as they vote (by not voting) for his empty and inane alternative, is gaining ground by dint of sheer repetition.

And the country can't really afford to be hoodwinked by this tripe.

It would be amusing, if it wasn't so tragic, how Doctor Alfred Sant's machine keeps pumping out slogan after slogan after vapid slogan. One really has to wonder why they treat their supporters with such contempt.

It is clear that Doctor Alfred Sant assumes that no one can comprehend the complexities that issue forth from between lips framing simpering smiles, when they're not pursing into condescending sneers when some upstart journalist asks an awkward question. This being obviously the case, the man has to reduce everything to easily grasped slogans around which even the meanest intelligence can wrap itself. So arguments get reduced to slogans, and even the slogans are emptied of even their vestigial meanings, because they are based on mistruths and twists of reality that are brazen to the point of audacity.

That this tactic is irresponsible to the nth degree worries this Doctor Alfred Sant character not at all, naturally, because as his record demonstrates beyond a shadow of doubt, he will say anything so long as it gets him a vote or two. As he had said himself, he will make a pact with the devil if it gets him into power, which says volumes about his political morality.

You may ask, dragging me back to the point, why I think this attitude is irresponsible. It's because it has made the debate on our country's future resemble a school-yard brawl, with the little boys taunting the little girls and showing them their bottoms. To be sure, our country deserves better than somebody chanting "PartnerSHIP," "PartnerSHIP", "PartnerSHIP".

At the very least, Doctor Alfred Sant should have the common decency to tell us what this notion of "PartnerSHIP" is all about, because however much he and his platitude mouthing (soon to be ex-) colleagues say that it's clear, it resembles nothing more than thick, thick mud.

Pinowhat?

This habit Doctor Alfred Sant has of letting his mouth run away from his brain seems to be catching.

The latest manifestation of this disease came from Dr Anna Mallia, writing in l-orizzont (which I can read now it's on the net). Hyperbole overtook reality with a vengeance last Wednesday when the good lady thought it would be amusing to evoke the image of the Dictator Pinochet to illustrate the pretty pass to which this country has come.

Precisely why the dear darling thought this was a nifty idea was lost in the twists and turns of her literary effort, but from what I could make out, it took root in some notion she has that if you say something against the government, you are taken out and shot.

Or something.

This mildly hyperbolic way of expressing one's self is not confined to La Mallia, of course, even if she is prone to some exaggeration of theory and expression every so often.

Every single MLP spokesman seems to have taken a sacred oath, obliging him or herself to portray the government as a heartless ogre, squatting on his throne having grapes dropped into his gaping maw by vestal virgins, while in slanting rain outside the palace gates, the populace starves and rips the limbs of new-born babes, just to have something on which to chew.

Does anyone, except for the stupidest of Doctor Alfred Sant's supporters, really believe that the whole cabinet of ministers and their parliamentary secretaries are just there for the sheer fun of teeing off the populace at large?

It's not as if the country has not improved by recognition since we suffered the mismanagement of the Malta Labour Party as headed by Dom Mintoff and Dr KMB, when making do and going for the cheapest of tawdry Third World rejects was the order of the day.

Missiles away

I have heard silly remarks about why we should not take our rightful place in Europe. The silliest, of course, is that there is some sort of alternative to be found in Doctor Alfred Sant's PartnerSHIP, but a close second was the one about how missiles will be zooming overhead when we join.

Quite apart from the fact that the whole idea is ludicrous scare-mongering, if the worst came to the worst and the brown stuff were to hit the revolving blades, will our being out of the EU make the blindest bit of difference?

What does Doctor Alfred Sant think, for heaven's sake, that the Sidewinders and Exocets will screech to a halt just outside our flight information region and turn sharp left, to bypass us, if we are not in the Union?

Patent balderdash, of course, as was his remark that the employees of Rotos Ziraya should beware of joining the EU because their jobs would be threatened.

The only problem with this particular gem of Doctor Alfred Sant's was the small fact that this company had closed its doors some time ago.

But then, someone who is irresponsible enough to go around casting doubts about the viability of private commercial companies because it suits his political convenience isn't going to let an inconvenient fact or two get in the way of a good old rant, now is he?

Have a nosh

With a typical politician's zeal to invoke motherhood, the flag and apple pie, some MLP cog in the machine recently said that Maltese families can't eat ideologies, so while the idea of getting into Europe might not be such a bad one in an ideological sense, it won't feed the hungry brood.

From a purely utilitarian point of view, the cog would have been right were it not for the stark fact that getting into Europe has moderately more substance to it than Doctor Alfred Sant's phantasmagoric PartnerSHIP (repeat 16 times, breathlessly).

You try eating a PartnerSHIP, after all.

Courting disaster

I was listening to parliament, as is my wont, and Dr Anglu Farrugia was having a right old moan about how the courts are inefficient and how no one knows which judge has been given which case and so on and so forth.

To be fair, the legal gentleman is right and it behooves anyone involved to take a good long look at the situation and do something about it.

The problem is, with lawcourts the world over, that the dear old justices tend to be a bit touchy when it comes to people telling them what to do and when to do it, so the government has a bit of a tricky one here.

It's not all bad news on the legal front, of course. You should have a browse over to the ministry of justice website and once you get past the vision of Bill Gates that pops up, you will be in a site that is state of the art, allowing beagling eagles to access the information they need from the comfort of their own offices.

Which is a quantum leap forward and no mistake.

Those voices

That dream came back, the one where I'm on a banyan tree covered island, where the navel gazers are plotting to get rid of their head navel gazer.

The picture is getting more and more distinct, friends, and I can actually recognise a few faces and make out quite clearly what they're saying.

I am bound, in my dream, by professional ethics (banyan tree farmers have ethics?), but the bottom line is that the plotters are hoping like crazy that the minions of the two tribes cast their coconuts in favour of looking further over the sea to the big country to the North.

Apparently, this would give the plotters the excuse they need to cast the Head Honcho into the outer darkness, along with his three little friends.

Interesting. I wonder what it all means.

Come to the Cabaret

In fact, I did. Come to the Cabaret, I mean, and I enjoyed it enormously. Many congratulations to all concerned, especially the people who designed the costumes.

Not as bad as all that

He's not a bad guy, is David Beckham, but he does not seem to be fully in touch with reality.

After England were well and truly creamed by the Aussies, who put on a good show, which looked superb when viewed against the inept bumble the English put on, he was heard on the radio saying that the result was not as bad as all that.

Earth to David: you lost, three one, to a country that has beaten yours at everything from cricket to tiddlywinks. What do you mean, it wasn't so bad?

It was pathetic.